Homecoming
by GigawattConduit
Summary: After a crazy day fighting Grimm in Vale, Team JNPR goes to Ren's home village. Post volume 2.


_Ren, we'll make it to that village another time. _

It was three days after all the craziness in the city. During the ride to help team RWBY, Jaune said that he'd personally accompany Ren and Nora to the village, to makeup for having them miss out on it. Pyrrha, of course, joined just because it was in her nature to support her friends, which led them to today.

Everything was as Ren had remembered it being. The two noodle shops across from each other near the village entrance, the roughhousing of three girls and two boys that eventually took them to the pond, even the crickets chirping in almost perfect timing with the street musicians playing their drums and flutes.

It was everything as he'd remembered.

He was welcomed with shock and fondness by everyone who crossed their path. The noodle owners let each member have a free bowl, the kids even took time to say hello and ask Ren to show off for them, or for Pyrrha to use Miló. While Jaune and Pyrrha were fairly soft spoken and kind, Nora was as outspoken as ever, and had even tried to let one of the children hold Magnhild.

Quickly dragging Nora and her hammer/grenade launcher away from the impressionable youth and any targets for massive damage, Ren led the four to a small place farther down the trail. Surrounded by tomatoes, apples, and oranges, it was a small abode with only two windows and a set of wind flutes hanging on the door, which in kanji, said 'welcome'.

"Can we meet your parents?" Jaune asked.

Moments passed before Ren answered, "I'd like to talk to my mother first, if you don't mind."

"Ren...are you sure?" Nora asked softly. Her fingers stopped at his sleeves, nearly wrapping around them to stop him from leaving.

"It's okay, Nora. Five minutes. Then you can bring them around."

The Viking nodded slowly, curling her fingers back as Ren left. To Jaune and Pyrrha's surprise, he didn't enter through the front door, but rather walked around to the backyard.

"Hello, mother," Ren smiled softly as he sat in the oak chair. His fingers trailed the markings on the arms, markings that he himself made as a child. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it earlier like I said I would. I truly am."

He licked his lips before continuing. "Beacon is going well. Great, actually. I'm acing all my classes, and Nora and I are on the same team. We work just as well as when you saw us last year. My form's improved. I'll show you later, if you'd like."

"We're making many friends. Well, Nora is," he chuckled. "And when she makes friends, they sort of become my friends by proxy. I guess I'm still shy. Good thing she makes up for my silence. She gets along with one of our friends, Yang. In a lot of ways, they could be sisters."

Ren sniffed. This was the hard part. "I really wish you could've seen me off with father when we left for Beacon, mother. The sky was beautiful that day, like the time we went to beach and caught that fish. The one we ended up eating for dinner four days straight. I wish you could see me at the Vytal Festival we're having in a few weeks. And..."

He slid out of the chair, tears streaming his face, head hung low. "_Wǒ xīwàng nǐ huílái jiù xiàng nǐ gàosù wǒ gùshì zhōng de yīngxióng_." His fingers grazed the markings on the headstone, all too familiar with the words, words from the story she read to him as a boy: _"I wish to ride a swift mount, to take me back to my home."_

Ren felt his body get turned away from his mother's grave as Nora buried his head in her shoulder. He sobbed freely, clutching onto her with all the strength he could muster. Soon, Pyrrha and Jaune had their arms wrapped around him, forcing him to clutch onto them as he cried.

"Jaune, Pyrrha," Ren sniffed as their group hug ended. "I'd like you to meet my mother." He extended an arm to show them her headstone before returning to his chair. "She's why I wanted to come to this village."

Jaune smiled brightly as he sat down directly in front of the headstone. "It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Ren. I'm honored to have him as a part of my team."

Ren rocked back in his chair as his teammates talked with his mother. He wiped what was left of his tears away before pulling a white and purple lotus flower out of his sleeve. He stared at it, then placed it upon his mother's headstone.

_Wǒ dàojiāle, mǔqīn._

**Something I've had stewing in my head since the Volume 2 finale. It got me thinking, the way that Jaune promised Ren they'd go to that village another time, what if it was because that was where he grew up and eventually met Nora? Once that was decided, I thought that his mother had to be dead; since he's based on Mulan, I thought it'd be interesting if his mother was in some ways the Mulan of Huntresses, gaining her fame and notoriety. But she didn't want her son to idolize her and think her to be this fantastic hero when she just considers it her duty as a citizen of the Kingdoms, so she told him the stories of her adventures, while keeping her identity secret. He found out eventually, though.**

**I used Google Translate for the Chinese, so if that's wrong, I apologize.**

**_Wǒ xīwàng nǐ huí dào xiàng yīngxióng, nǐ gàosù wǒ de gùshì.=_****I wish you returned like the hero in the stories you told me.**

**_Wǒ dàojiāle, mǔqīn.=_****I am home, mother.**


End file.
